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Over the course of five days of intense action, a field of 336 players was whittled down to just 8 at the European Poker Tour Loutraki Main Event in Greece. Zimnan Ziyard currently leads the charge in pursuit of the 347k Euro reserved for first place.

Just 38 players were admitted to the tables on Day 4 (Day 1 was split into two starting flights over two days). Ziyard handily bested the competition to make the final table with a formidable chip stack totaling nearly 2.8 million.

The pace of play was fast and furious from the first minute of action, with 13 players hitting the rail within 75 minutes of play. Julian Herold, the chip leader on Day 1a, was among them. So was Jude Ainsworth, one of the last players remaining from Team PokerStars Pro. His teammate Toni Judet, the chip leader on Day 2, was eliminated in the next level. Meanwhile, Charalmapos Kapernopoulos built his stack to nearly 1.3 million.

Kapernopoulos began to falter as the day went on, losing massive pots to Hauke Haseding and Ioannis Taramas before eventually giving the chip lead to Haseding. Haseding’s reign on the top of the leaderboard didn’t last long, however, as Rupert Elder and Ziyard began to climb through the ranks.

The tables suddenly turned when Ziyard and Elder became engaged in a heads-up battle. Elder pushed all-in with K-J suited, a fair match for Ziyard’s pocket queens. The board offered no help to Elder, and the former EPT champion hit the rail.

Ziyard maintained the chip lead for the rest of the day, fighting off Mario Puccini and Haseding along the way. Ziyard will enter the final day of action with a massive 1 million chip lead over second place. He’ll need to survive talented pros including Pierre Mothes, Florian Schleps and Andras Kovacs in order to claim victory.